


the days have no numbers

by SodiumCyanide



Series: sure as any living dream [1]
Category: The Walking Dead (Telltale Video Game)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Five Stages of Grief, Grief/Mourning, Other, Post-Episode One, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000, as in Marlon is still dead, y'know as in passing mention of zombie-bashing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-06-29 20:14:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15736572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SodiumCyanide/pseuds/SodiumCyanide
Summary: There is a boy with a gun in his hand and a wide-eyed question so dramatic it’d fit right into any clichéd horror movie, except it’s real. Except it can’t be. A shot rang out, and a body went down, but it’s not real, because if it is-Someone’s crying.It takes a moment for Louis to realize that it’s him.





	the days have no numbers

Louis has seen some shit, both literally and figuratively. He saw the whole fucking world fall into pieces, and his life, too, though on a smaller scale. He saw someone get their entire guts pulled out of them in what, at the time, felt like a never-ending stream of blood and intestines (a tale that he now regards as his greatest party trick). He has seen death and brains and gore and walked away, not fine and dandy but at least relatively chipper, considering the circumstances.

And now Louis sees Marlon fall to the ground, pink and white and red streaming down his suddenly too-pale face; sees him fall into the mud and dirt, rain pouring down on his letterman jacket, and Louis’ brain just. Short circuits.

‘cause this can’t be. There is a boy with a gun in his hand and a wide-eyed question so dramatic it’d fit right into any clichéd horror movie, except it’s real. Except it can’t be. A shot rang out, and a body went down, but it’s not real, because if it is-

is it-

it is-

Louis vaguely registers Violet’s half-strangled voice, saying something that could be anything, really; her shaking hands a blur in his peripheral vision-

and there’s Clem, paralyzed, rooted to the spot, completely unlike what he’s seen of her so far, always ready to spring into action-

and he’s falling to his knees, unblinking and silent, because in that moment, all he can see is Marlon playing soccer, a lifetime ago.

Someone’s crying.

It takes a moment for Louis to realize that it’s him.

 

 

The next day, the dust has settled just about everywhere except in Louis’ mind, when-

_he’s going to murder that fucking kid_

-Louis stops himself short, his brain whizzing to a stop (this time voluntary) and reels back at his own mind. Because that’s. That’s. A bit much. A lot much. There’s too much death already in this world ~~Marlon’s brain scattered over the courtyard~~ and he’d prefer not to add more than necessary to it.

Still.

He’s shaking, something red-hot and awful pulsing in his ears and clenching, unclenching his fists. His head is filled with cotton and an awful voice that wants to grab Chairles and _hit_ -

It’s not fair. He and Marlon put bugs in each other’s sheets and played ball and bashed skulls together and it’s _not fucking fair_. Louis thinks, in his own completely unopiniated opinion, that he’s lost enough already.

Outside, the sky is too sunny for him to stand, and there is too much confusion and uncertain sympathy going around to be bearable. In lack of anything else to do, he goes to an abandoned room on the second floor of the school and destroys a bookcase, until he only feels sweat and dust cover his face instead of rain. There’s a hesitant knock on the heavy, mahogany door, and an equally as hesitant voice that follows it.

“Hey, Louis? You in there?”

For once, when Louis asks Violet to fuck off, she actually does so. He isn’t empty enough not to be grateful. When he no longer hears her footsteps outside he curls up in the darkest corner of the room, buries his head in his hands, and tries to breathe through the pain in his chest.

 

The dark isn’t comforting, but comfort isn’t what he’s after. His thoughts stray to the martyrs of past, suffering torture for a greater being, and while he wonders why an almighty God would need humans to readily accept pain, he can also sort of relate to them. The dark is a self-inflicted punishment. It can’t cover the guilt that’s eating him alive.

Hah. Eating him alive. Now that’s a joke for you.

Why hadn’t he seen it sooner? Seen Marlon’s shifty eyes and half-believed lies – lies he told everyone, including and especially himself? When he can’t stand the dark anymore, punishment or not, Louis gets up and walks the silent stretch of hallways to the greenhouse. The school is- was- old enough to have a grand dining hall, complete with large, colonial windows overlooking what had once been grassy grounds. It was always blasted hot and stuffy even before the apocalypse, and had therefore been the obvious place for tomatoes and peas to grow. Now, the walls are overgrown with some sort of invasive ivy, and most of the vegetables have shrivelled up and died, strangled by weeds.

It’s quiet, still humid, and Louis sits down on a relatively clear spot of floor and starts drawing nonsensical symbols in the heavy layer of dust. Marlon had, for better and sometimes for worse, been his best friend. Shouldn’t he have noticed? Surely, he could’ve done more? Seen the kid with a gun the size of his head and called out a warning? Somehow dragged Marlon out of the way? He'd been scared, and his actions had been awful, and he still hadn't deserved to die. He should've at least lived.

Louis absentmindedly picks the dead leaves off a plant, instead of picking at his nails. Wouldn’t want to catch anything. Wouldn’t want to think about the crusted blood under his nails.

 

Practicality catches up with him, after a while. In the immediate aftermath of what Louis labels at “the Incident” – the I is capitalized, the reality is too gruesome to name – there had been detached motions, steady hands hardened by digging too many graves. They had buried Marlon in their graveyard (because he had been their friend, once, and because they couldn't just leave the corpse around), but they had buried Brody first. Gingerly carried her out of the basement, cold and stiff, eyes glassy and unseeing. Too small, six feet deep. Mitch had fashioned crude crosses out of sticks and Tenn had placed the last dying flowers of the season on the fresh mounds of dirt.

Tenn is a good kid. Too good, probably. The graves of his sisters seem emptier than they were before, and he’s not sure whether they still need flowers.

Louis has calloused hands, coated in a thick layer of grime, and his mind is (for once) quiet, blank- _at least it was the head; no dirty afterwork_. Well, it lasted for a moment. Small blessings.

Anyways, practicality. Louis goes out, checks the traps, makes a dumb pun about a tree that falls flatter than even he expected, because his humour flees him, slips through his fingers and leaves him raw.

The group doesn’t have a clear-cut leader anymore. There’s no second-in-command to step up either, because the second-in-command was killed by the first-in-command. Louis is sure some of them expects him to pick up the metaphorical mantle, but he doesn’t want it. Doesn’t want to have to carry that title and all it entails. What he wants most is to weed in the greenhouse and play the piano and have the energy to laugh again. His stack of cards lay heavy in his pocket; he hasn’t touched them since the Incident. Violet, Aasim and Clementine take tentative control, and Louis is stuck between guilt of not doing his part and longing for quiet, lonely classrooms. He’s itchy, restless, and exhausted all at once, and the next time he sees a walker he beats it until it no longer bears any resemblance to anyone he ~~knows~~ knew.

 

Clementine takes AJ’s gun away. She gives it back after her first supply run after the Incident, reminded of the monsters outside. What scares Louis the most isn’t that AJ has the gun – it’s that he handles it like he’s never mishandled it before.

 

A few days pass. Between hunting and eating and sleeping and not thinking, Louis has managed to clear out a few square metres of the greenhouse. Of course, there’s little he can do about cleaning years of dirt and much off the floor, but most of the dead plants are gone and a lot of the ivy ripped off of the walls and carried to the composting pile outside. The heavy rainfall the night of the Incident filled up their rain catchers, and Louis allows himself a precious pile of water and scrubs down the cleared windows. It’s pretty fucking disgusting; the water quickly turns greenish brown and runs down his hands and stains his coat-sleeves, but it’s worth it once the sun comes out. Sunbeams fan out over the floor, and Louis ignores the ache in his shoulder and wrist and walks away while whistling off-tune.

 

“It looks really good in here now” Violet says, leaning not-so-nonchalantly against the wall, and (rightly so) admires Louis’ handiwork. “You can almost see the floor”

“All curtesy of yours truly” Louis replies with a hint of his before-self peeking out, and spreads his arms in an expansive gesture, as if to hug the entire greenhouse. “Soon, we’ll have eco-local beans again. Good thing too; you can only eat so many rabbits before you start wishin’ for peas”

Violet rolls her eyes and tries to hide her smile. “Cool it. It’s far from done”

“That’s why I said soon, Vi, don’t you ever listen?”

“Shut up”

 

The raiders still haven’t come. Still, Louis walks the perimeter of their walls with Chairles on his shoulder, patching up any holes and breaches and takes note of any weak spots. Rosie often comes along, panting at his heel, her steady presence grounding. There is a damp chill in the air, the promise of rain.

The next time Louis plays the piano (his fingers tentatively poised above the keys for a split second, hesitating) AJ comes in and listens. Louis scoots over and tries teaching him _Für Elise_. Kid’s got nimble fingers, good not only for shooting.

Omar joins Louis in clearing out the greenhouse, because “the sooner we get this done, the sooner we’ll have something to actually put in the stews”. Ruby helps after a while, too, strong fingers pulling up the deepest roots. There’s an end in sight to this project, Louis thinks, and remembers sitting in the humid dark and shudders.

It feels so long ago. It feels like yesterday. Only a week has passed.

 

Clementine joins him on his perimeter patrols, and sometimes when they’re out hunting either animals or supplies. She’s not the most talkative so Louis ends up doing most of the talking, but what she does talk about is always interesting. Like how she met a famous baseball player, who unintentionally taught her how to swear in Spanish. Or how she walked through herds of deadheads covered in dead guts (Louis only retches a little). Or, quieter, how she shot at bottles in a moving train. She’s capable, and a bit ruthless, and very pretty. However, when he tried to flirt with her earlier she didn’t seem, well. Interested. So, like with so many other things, Louis jokes and smiles and tries fervently to not think about how soft her normally so stern eyes can be.

That is, until she takes his hand as they set out on their little patrol-walk-thing, and holds it until they’re back at the gate, and _oh_. Clementine gruffly adjusts her cap with her other hand and is awkward and bold at the same time in one impossible package, looking pointedly away from him while squeezing his hand a little harder, almost defiantly. Louis isn’t the kind of guy to blush, but if he was, he totally would be.

(That’s a lie. Violet teases him about what his face looked like when they came back for at least a week, once she stops being jealous and starts being a little shit.)

 

There are two more ghosts at the school now. Louis looks at the picture of him and Marlon, clean-faced and impossibly young, and then goes off to tend to the newly-sprouted carrots. Then he has to help fortify their east fence, and take inventory of this week’s gathered supplies, and probably take a nap.

A cold wind sweeps the courtyard. The earth is dry. Louis lives in the moment, breathes in the fresh air without a hint of copper.

He has other worries than old relations. He has other joys.

**Author's Note:**

> title is from bon iver's "00000 Million"  
> -  
> this is my first venture into any kind of TWDG-fanfic, so sorry of it's horribly ooc lmao  
> (when september comes knocking this will be extremely au anyway so whatever (((^': pleas telltale i'm begging you,,leave my Son alone dont hurt him)  
> edit 29/9: obvs this was written and published before episode 2 so its not canon compliant really  
> also i am a fool and didn't read the gotdamn map correctly hence why the greenhouse aint a real greenhouse hjhgj
> 
> any kind of feedback is appreciated and thanks a bunch for reading, cheers x


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